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The World's Nine Largest Science Projects

Posted by samzenpus on from the my-science-is-bigger-than-yours dept.

JBG667 writes "Nice overview of the 9 largest science projects currently ongoing. Some of the usual suspects are on the list including CERN, Space Elevator, Space Station, etc. As well as some lesser known including a 3,000-foot-tall 'Solar tower,' the ANTARES underwater neutrino detecting array, and more. Nice read for science buffs."

9 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. wrong wrong wrong by ILuvRamen · · Score: 2, Informative

    First of all, a couple links are broken and there's major spelling errors. But to get to my real point, it says "one 200MW power station will provide enough electricity to around 200,000 typical Australian households." Oh boy, households being used as a unit of electricity again! Okay, let's do the math. That's 1000 watts per house. Wow, so everyone can have one light bulb on while their small microwave is running and that's it. Most people have 1000 watts in lights on at any given time let alone cooking and heating and cooling. What a load of bullshit. I hate sensationalist stats that are horribly, HORRIBLY incorrect.

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    1. Re:wrong wrong wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Okay, let's do the math. That's 1000 watts per house. Wow, so everyone can have one light bulb on while their small microwave is running and that's it. Most people have 1000 watts in lights on at any given time let alone cooking and heating and cooling. What a load of bullshit. I hate sensationalist stats that are horribly, HORRIBLY incorrect. No, you're horrible, HORRIBLY incorrect. 1000 watts used constantly is around (24*30=)720 kilowatt-hours per month. This is a very reasonable amount of usage for an average household. Go check the usage on an electricity bill if you don't believe me.

      (For interest's sake, my wife and I together use around 600 kilowatt-hours every month, and thats with a computer running 24/7, AC, and nothing fancy like energy-saving bulbs.)

    2. Re:wrong wrong wrong by smallfries · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, his numbers are quite reasonable. You Americans have no idea about efficiency and you probably waste more power than the average European household uses in total.

      I share a one-bed (ie 4 rooms, I would guess about 100m^2) flat with my girlfriend. This is a typical sized household for the UK (although the average size is obviously larger). We average 5 kWh per day (so ~1600 kWh per month). We don't live in the dark, the flat is warm over the winter despite the horrific lack of insulation and we are hardly living in the stone age. From the couch I can see three games consoles, three computers, flat-screen tv etc...

      Your power consumption is seven times larger than ours (ignoring fuel consumption which is a major component). You are not conservative by any measure, just because you think you are at the low-usage end of the most wasteful, polluting nation on earth. Do you ever wonder why the rest of the world wants you to hold back on the raping the planet?

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  2. From TFA by zaydana · · Score: 3, Informative

    "With a large mirror, 6.5 meter (21.3 feet) diameter mirror the $5 billion+ [James Webb Space Telescope] will launch folded up inside the space shuttle and then unfold to its full-size - several times that of Hubble." Launching a spacecraft to a 1.5 million km orbit with the space shuttle in 2013. Its good to see the discovery channel has done their research. Honestly, I expected more from these guys...

  3. Another factual error by Ai+Olor-Wile · · Score: 4, Informative

    The article suggests that the James Webb Space Telescope will be launched from the Space Shuttle, and somehow make it out to 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth. Wikipedia likes to note that an Ariane 5 rocket will be used instead. This is a surprisingly flawed story!

  4. Re:No... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    And if half the people match this meager rate in the 200,000 homes at once, I don't care what their monthly average is, they just overloaded the power grid. You have some serious problems with rational thinking. Being a 200MW station means that its producing 200MW at any one time. Certainly usage may exceed this during some periods, but usage will also fall short of this during other periods. You think that a power station just pisses the electricity away when not needed? It's stored for later use, or sold to other grids - that way theres plenty of juice when the usage peaks (either from what's stored or by buying back from other grids).

    So you may not care about average power usage, but the people who are designing and building the electricity infrastructure certainly do. Saying that the station will provide enough power for 200000 homes is a nice *basic* statement to put the size of the station into perspective. Or would you really have preferred that they say "Enough for 80000 homes during the day in the summer, 400000 homes during the night, 150000 homes during the day in the winter,...", etc? A small blurb in a news article does not warrant such pedantry.

  5. Take this list with a grain of salt. by AbRASiON · · Score: 4, Informative

    Perhaps my googling and wikipedia skills are off the mark but I was looking up large buildings just earlier this week and that solar tower in Australia seems to be on hold / cancelled.

    Last info I could find mentioned the company attempting to do the same thing but in texas now, infact that entire project has been quiet / off the grid for maybe over a year.

    If that's wrong, what else on the list isn't happening?

  6. Re:WTF! The space elevator? by damburger · · Score: 2, Informative

    NASA has already run competitions to build elevator climbers. There are millions (perhaps billions) being invested in the development of carbon nanotubes as a viable building material. If such time, energy and money were being spent on building a warp drive, then you might have a point.

    --
    If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
  7. Here's the official numbers by uuxququex · · Score: 5, Informative
    I found the official numbers of the national budget institute (NIBUD). You can see that the average consumption is quite a bit lower than your expenditure.

    Mechanical translation provided by Google, just scroll down to "Electricity".

    1 person household: 2220 kWh
    2 person household: 3095 kWh
    3 person household: 3875 kWh

    Average over all households: 3230 kWh